Elie Wiesel's Putting Faith In Tomorrow's Youth

His flight was late. Finally, after half an hour's wait, the tall, slightly stooped figure appeared in the doorway.

Teacher Saul David Fript hastened to introduce his young students to the man they had been waiting for: Nobel laureate, author and international human rights activist Elie Wiesel.

One might have expected thunderous applause. But instead, as the 70-year-old Wiesel entered the cozy auditorium, he was greeted by awed silence.

The approximately 50 students gathered in The Latin School of Chicago auditorium on this sunny afternoon last week were enrolled in a course called "The Nazi Mind." The course involves, among other things, watching movies about the Holocaust, combing through the transcripts of the Nuremberg war crimes trials and, of course, reading "Night," Wiesel's wrenching but eloquent account of his experiences in the Nazi death camps.

After months of study, they were meeting the man, the author, the Holocaust survivor in the flesh. But their hands and voices failed them, leaving only silence.

It was a silence that the soft-spoken Wiesel understood. Finally, he pierced it, saying he would rather take questions from them than deliver a dry lecture.

Originally Fript was going to read questions that the students had submitted, but Wiesel stopped him. Settling into his chair, he insisted on hearing the queries from the shy students themselves.

As the first student worked up the nerve to croak out his question, Wiesel asked him to first stand up.

"What is your opinion about the banality of evil?" the standing student asked.

"The book or the concept?" Wiesel replied.

"The . . . concept," the student said.

Wiesel embarked on a discourse in a wispy, accented voice that was hard to hear. He finished with an observation about misdirected energy, noting, "If bank robbers would invest the talent they use for robbing into something good, they would make a lot more money."

As he talked gently, moving pensively yet authoritatively among topics ranging from hatred, the Holocaust and the indelibility of hope, it became evident that he enjoys children deeply. Indeed, Peggy Shapiro, who organized Wiesel's lecture series at Moriah Congregation in Deerfield for 18 years, recalled a talk Wiesel engaged in several years ago with students from Solomon Schecter Day School in Northbrook, a talk from which he had a hard time tearing himself away.

"He had 1,000 paying adults waiting for him to give a lecture in Deerfield, but we couldn't get him to say goodbye to the kids," says Shapiro. "He wanted to stay because he thought the children's questions were so good."

The awe the Latin students displayed continued well after their conversation with Wiesel.

"It was amazing," said Sadath Garcia, a Latin 12th grader. "It definitely brought in a new perspective, a visual perspective, to what I had been learning in "The Nazi Mind" class. I mean here he was in front of us. It was really intense."

For Garcia, as well as many other students who attended the talk, one of the things Wiesel said that stood out the most was his assertion that after his years in the death camp, he still believes in God.

"Coming from such a religious background and then having to go through the Holocaust, I would think that someone would not be able to hold so firmly to that connection with God," said 10th grader Danielle Steele. "He said that he fights with God, but it comes from his faith in God or he wouldn't bother with it."

Although Wiesel's late arrival at O'Hare cut short the time he was able to spend with the students before delivering an address to the entire school community, he still covered a variety of topics.

"Given your opinion on the theater's inability to convey what happened in the Holocaust," one student asked, "what did you think of a movie like "Schindler's List"?

Wiesel explained that he had been invited onto the set of the Steven Spielberg film and was later offered a private screening, but was not very interested in either. In general, he says, he understands the intent of such works but is "skeptical" about them. "I would rather have a document or a drama but not one that tries to be both," he said.

In addition to taking "The Nazi Mind" class, and participating in the re-enactment of the Nuremberg trials that the course culminates in, a number of Latin students are helping to produce an original play called "To Bear Witness . . . The Holocaust" that will debut at the school later this fall.

"The play is a compilation of works about the Holocaust which have been (assembled) for chamber theater," said Latin 10th grader Jon Levine. "They have been compiled to show the suffering that occurred and the processes (Holocaust victims) had to go through."

Wiesel was candid in his opinion of such endeavors during his speech to the entire school later that evening. "I know you are doing a play (about the Holocaust) and I applaud you for that because you are trying," he said. "But you will fail."